


Salvation

by Antihelen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, This is not actually a dark fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 03:26:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antihelen/pseuds/Antihelen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is in Hell.  Lucifer plans to break him under his own hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salvation

**Author's Note:**

> This is a slight AU in that Lucifer is out of his cage and ruling Hell during Dean’s forty years.

The Righteous Man has been a guest in his domain for near on thirty years. He has cried and screamed and choked, a melody of suffering, and every noise is beautiful to Lucifer’s ears. He has watched as Alistair cuts and burns and rips in a never ending masterpiece. He has seen all of Dean that there is to see, and the pleasure he takes from it is as warm as the thick, pulsing blood that coats Dean’s hand when Alistair forces him to pull his own heart from his chest.

His body, this manifestation of his physical form, has been broken more times and in more ways than there are grains of sand in his Father’s creation. Each day Dean is destroyed utterly only to be made anew, a template of shattered perfection.

Yet his soul remains pure.

Lucifer knows this is Michael’s vessel, but for every day that Dean is opened and laid bare before him, for every aspect of Dean that he comes to know, the less he is reminded of his beloved brother. For Michael took his sibling and cast him out, banished him from all that he held close, because Lucifer loved and Michael obeyed. Dean, though. Dean loved his brother too, but when he was ordered to obey, he refused. He put his brother before all else, even as with that love he condemned himself to an eternity of Hell.

How could this vessel not be capable of containing Michael, when he is more than Michael could ever be?

But Hell destroys everything good, and the Righteous Man will be no different. His is a soul that could melt Alistair’s cruellest instruments with its brightness, but Lucifer knows intimately of darkness and of cold, the way it leeches out everything true and good with a cruel and crawling inevitability.

Dean will step off the rack, but it will not be into his torturer’s waiting arms. He will be led to Lucifer’s throne room, and he will kneel, and he will break for the Morningstar. Lucifer will have the Righteous Man, his brother’s vessel. He will blacken this soul, tie it to his side in a willing mockery of affection, and it will be his greatest achievement.

And he does.

Dean is taken from Alistair, shepherded through myriad spaces and screams, and placed before the ruler of Hell. 

The Righteous Man is on his knees before him, and Lucifer smiles - 

\- and pauses.

Lucifer has seen every part of Dean. He knows his life as well as he knows his own, has witnessed every cell made and unmade a thousand times, has felt every thought and emotion that makes him who he is. But it is only now, with Dean before him and naked in his perfection, that he understands.

He has compared him to Michael, and it was the Archangel who was found wanting. He has seen the love that brought Dean here and the agonies that he has endured, but nowhere in him has there ever been regret for his decision. Lucifer struggles to understand how a soul so bruised and fragile can be so strong, but the evidence is before him and indisputable. 

Angels are creatures of love, but even the best of them would pale before the blinding brilliance in front of him. The darkness has done its best to smother this soul, but even after all of this time it is no more than a blanket covering the truth; the light is merely hidden, not destroyed.

The Devil smiles, and reaches -

\- and it is in the form of the Righteous Man, bowed and bloody and beautiful, that Lucifer finds his salvation.

He offers his hand, and where he should have pulled this broken soul into the dark, instead it is with the kiss of skin on skin that Dean, unknowing, leads the Devil into the light.


End file.
